Aliya Sternstein: Learning to cope through pop culture

Paul used to wake up at 5:30 a.m., step out of bed -- always the right side -- shower, eat a banana, watch the morning news and then drive to high school promptly at 6:56 a.m. This was every morning for a year.

He followed this pattern to calm his anxiety -- to stop the constant worries and self-doubting. If he ran out of bananas, his routine would be ruined, and he wouldn't be able to concentrate in his first period class.

Paul has obsessive-compulsive disorder. Paul is an alias. Paul's real-life counterpart sought treatment in college.

There is no denying that mental illness is part of this campus. The Daily Pennsylvanian's in-depth article on depression this past October noted that Counseling and Psychological Services lists anxiety -- often related to depression -- as a common reason that 10 percent of the student body seeks help every year. A College junior just started a new campus group, called "Open Minds," to raise awareness about mental health at Penn. And sadly, a Wharton junior jumped from a dorm window to his death last semester. Our XandO conversations consist of missed therapist appointments, bipolar disorder medications and the girl over at the next table, who must be anorexic.

Apparently, this acceptance is common among Ivy Leaguers -- and increasing. After eyeing the cover story of Sunday's New York Times education section, I read that, despite the fading stigma of therapy, "the classic concerns -- leaving home, fitting in, forming relationships, doing well, finding the right career -- have been complicated by more split families, more lifestyle choices, the alienating effects of technology, constant bombardment of information, a shrinking economy and mounting academic pressure." And Sept. 11 threw everyone for a doozy.

But when John Forbes Nash -- a mathematical genius, Nobel Prize recipient and inspiration for Ron Howard's new film, A Beautiful Mind, -- struggled with paranoid schizophrenia, the movie portrayed him as a bumbling lunatic on Princeton's campus in the 1950s. I'm not accusing A Beautiful Mind of glamorizing yet another cuckoo flying over the cuckoo's nest. Hardly. I think movies like A Beautiful Mind, while fictional, are needed. They glamorize recovery.

The U.S. Surgeon General put the stethoscope to the entertainment industry's heart less than two years ago. The diagnosis? Hollywood can do more to teach audiences that mental illness is treatable and that suicide is preventable.

In A Beautiful Mind, I saw some progress. Without giving too much away, I can say the movie chronicles the effective medication and therapy of a man who -- while often staring blankly, lost in his own head -- completed work in game theory that contributed to the nation's nuclear arms strategy.

Albeit counterfeit in terms of biographical and psychological accuracy, the movie produced what other flicks have failed to even consider: a delusional hero. Though the man's career was interrupted by a schizophrenic nightmare lasting more than 25 years, he successfully sought treatment and slowly recovered.

I was yahooing and tearing for this guy at the end of the movie.

Afterwards, I fumbled with my silverware at The Cheesecake Factory, aching to congratulate the real-life Nash. He is sort of like Paul, who quietly attacks his illness through therapy.

I can think of many examples of psychological disorders on screen - take Rain Man or Sybil. But there should be more films or television series, portraying the depressed, treatable and functioning people.

We need the entertainment industry to showcase the functioning, afflicted, not just the Raymonds or Sybils. Show us the businessman, who arrives for work everyday on time while lost in depressive thoughts, or the mom, who lovingly drives her child's carpool while coping with a hanging feel of dread. The so-called "normal" people are in greatest danger. If left untreated, they're the ones who commit suicide. One day the Morgan Stanley man may not show up for work or the mom may drive her Lexus SUV into a tree.

While diminishing, the stigma of therapy is not entirely gone. According to a World Health Organization report in October, "treatments are available, but nearly two thirds of people with a known mental disorder never seek help from a health professional and remain undiagnosed. Stigma, discrimination and neglect prevent care and treatment from reaching people with mental disorders."

I wonder how many Penn students, cheering along with me for Nash, our rival, the Princeton grad student, were those hurting, themselves.

For Paul, the story's not over. Like Nash's delusions, his compulsions still creep up now and then -- in the way he checks his alarm clock three times before going to bed or washes his hands needlessly. But he's getting there. And one day in the not-too-distant future, Paul's graduating from an institution like Princeton, with a smile wider than that silly banana he used to eat every morning.

Aliya Sternstein is a senior Psychology major from Potomac, Md.

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